Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos

#281

Post by edrxty » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 8:10 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #276

gpm wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Refunds aren't sufficient, you are owed whatever the replacement cost is. If the good is no longer available except for at 10x or 100x the price, you are owed that. If the good is no longer available at any price, but the person with the liability is capable of making it available, they should be required to do so (or negotiate a contract with you that buys out your rights, but you should be free to decline that or t…

That's unreasonable, wouldn't be practical, and goes against precedent. The analogy here is if you buy a vacuum cleaner from a store and it doesn't work because of a defect. You bring it back and get your money back. The store isn't required to provide you with another working vacuum cleaner. If the vacuum cleaner is no longer manufactured, they're not required to find one in mint condition on eBay that's 10x or 100x…

The bigger the asset, the more it approaches the parents suggestion.

If a rich person buys an expensive asset and it is defective, they're often owed for loss of use/revenue because they have the power to negotiate purchasing contracts that provide this. Us poors do not have this capability.

Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos

#282

Post by CamperBob2 » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 8:18 PM UTC

eloisant wrote: post #264

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moreover, DRM prevents copyright content from entering the public domain. In my personal opinion, anything that's not available without DRM shouldn't get copyright - otherwise it subverts the deal at the centre of copyright. The way around this would be to have a way to lodge a DRM free copy, which would be released to the public domain when the copyright expires, or on abandonment (so people wouldn't be denied acces…

I don't think DRM changes anything for the legal aspect of going public domain. I imagine that copies that were illegal with copyright (with DRM stripped) become legal once it gets to public domain.

The problem comes in when unbreakable DRM is introduced, including DRM that depends on an external server to provide access to licensed content. If the copy protection remains uncrackable after the copyright term expires, or if the server it depends on is no longer available, it amounts to theft from the public domain, pure and simple.

Content producers should be forced to choose between legal protection for their copyrights and technical protection. They should never have been permitted to claim both.

Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos

#283

Post by IX-103 » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 8:23 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #101

syshum wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All Copyright is a license, you buy a physical CD you are also buying a copyright license. You are attempting to make a distinction when none is present or valid

No you don’t get a license with a CD, you just get an object. It’s only copying that’s protected not existing physical copies. It’s the same with a book you get the physical book and that’s it. If the copyright expired then you can do all kinds of stuff with the book that you don’t otherwise get to do, barring a few exceptions that apply universally.

You're forgetting the performance license. With a (consumer grade) CD you get the rights for private performance of a non-commercial nature.

You don't usually get the rights to play the music for large audiences or for commercial use - those cost extra.

If you didn't get those rights then you couldn't even play the CD in the privacy of your own home, as that constitutes a performance of the work.

(Of course I kind of think there's something fundamentally strange with the idea of having to get "performance rights" for a recording that you supposedly own, but that doesn't change the law right now.)

Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos

#284

Post by Dracophoenix » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 8:27 PM UTC

sascha_sl wrote: post #257

MereInterest wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Coincidentally, NFT’s got the “transfer” side of the equation, but forgot about the “privilege” part! The tokens are yours in perpetuity, and can be transferred to others, but it’s not at all clear what privilege they provide. Exactly! This is the part that I cannot get past whenever people talk about NFTs. They are a neat toy, self-contained, and having unambiguous ownership of the NFT. But there is absolutely not…

This is the same issue all decentralized systems of ownership/value have, including all cryptocurrencies. Technology itself can't be a trust anchor without enforcement. The dollar has value due to a mixture of trust in its continued value and in the entity enforcing it. Bitcoin has value mostly because people speculate it has value. The extra decentralization loses its value as soon as you add enforcement, because no…

I would say this is more a fundamental problem/feature of human relations than technology. Every transaction, every contract, every treaty and every law has, on its own, little more value than a receipt. Centralization doesn't really solve that issue so much as it pretends to add the weight of government/society/God/{abstract entity of choice} where there is none. What's remained the same since time immemorial is that every act of trade is done voluntarily or under force. What blockchains and bitcoin change is by making the receipts self-provable and consistent without needing more information than a public key and a time of transaction. It doesn't change the need to assert one's property rights. That is still the purview of law and law enforcement short of a breakthrough in jurisprudence.

Your point about the dollar is flawed. The value of the dollar may be a floating currency at its most ideal but its "true" value, outside of forex, is determined by fiat. The Fed just financially engineers it in a very complicated manner with veritable pulleys and levers and, somewhere along the way, a gun to everyone's private bank account in the form of artificial inflation/negative interest rates, punitive taxes, and from time to time, suing institutions that make US financial theater look bad by threat of dubious litigation.

>>If you have to rely on police and courts to enforce your smart contract, why do you need the decentralized smart contract to begin with?

If police departments have to rely on private citizens to be bounty hunters or informants, is there a point to having a police force at all? What's the point of a legal system that depends on executive enforcement when the citizenry is capable of doing so on its own? Why do we have to have a mayor/governor/president? Why not a government of individual people addressing their own affairs as need be and judges/arbitrators as referees? The answer to both sets of questions is that they are both options to a larger question: "How should one handle interpersonal expectations and violations thereof?"

Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos

#285

Post by gpm » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 8:27 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #276

gpm wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Refunds aren't sufficient, you are owed whatever the replacement cost is. If the good is no longer available except for at 10x or 100x the price, you are owed that. If the good is no longer available at any price, but the person with the liability is capable of making it available, they should be required to do so (or negotiate a contract with you that buys out your rights, but you should be free to decline that or t…

That's unreasonable, wouldn't be practical, and goes against precedent. The analogy here is if you buy a vacuum cleaner from a store and it doesn't work because of a defect. You bring it back and get your money back. The store isn't required to provide you with another working vacuum cleaner. If the vacuum cleaner is no longer manufactured, they're not required to find one in mint condition on eBay that's 10x or 100x…

> and goes against precedent.

On the contrary, this is with the precedent, damages due to breach of contract, theft, destruction of property, etc are cost to replace not the original cost. And specific performance (i.e. requiring someone perform the action to fulfill the contract) is available if monetary damages aren't calculable (i.e. there is no replacement on the market).

Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos

#286

Post by Wowfunhappy » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 8:42 PM UTC

narwally wrote: post #251

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if they use DRM. It’s not possible for me to lose access to the music I’ve purchased on iTunes, the games I’ve purchased on GoG, or the audiobooks I’ve purchased on libro.fm. (Except through my own fault, which shouldn’t apply.)

iTunes doesn't use DRM anymore? I haven't used it since I had a 1st gen ipod mini back in high school, but I remember only certain music was available without DRM and you used to have to pay extra for it.

When they dropped DRM, they raised the price a bit. I don’t remember them ever offering a choice, but I could be wrong—regardless, the slightly-more-expensive, DRM-Free songs are all that’s available today.

If you purchased music before the switch, that does still have DRM. (As an aside, you can get rid of it by setting up a VM with an old version of iTunes and Requiem.)

Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos

#287

Post by reaperducer » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 8:56 PM UTC

colllectorof wrote: post #205

The reality is that most big tech companies want to get all the benefits of "going digital", while shifting all the costs or downsides of that move to the consumers. This is not accidental. This is a long-term strategy backed by an elaborate PR campaign. The campaign was so successful that most people aren't even aware of how bizarre the whole idea of "renting" digital content really is. You're "renting" something th…

How much of what you pay for "digital rentals" goes to creators

FWIW, Apple answered this partly recently. At least as it applies to music. It's not very much, but it's supposed to be a lot more than most other services.

I believe the context was refuting accusations in the Spotify dustup. I saw it on a site like macrumors, so some salt may be required.

Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos

#288

Post by Dracophoenix » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 8:57 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #256

josephcsible wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be in favor of the law having a clause like the "No Surrender of Others' Freedom" clause of the GPL. Basically saying "If you provide movies like this, then you must make them available without DRM. If you have other legal or contractual requirements that forbid you from making them available without DRM, then you can't make them available at all."

Moreover, DRM prevents copyright content from entering the public domain. In my personal opinion, anything that's not available without DRM shouldn't get copyright - otherwise it subverts the deal at the centre of copyright. The way around this would be to have a way to lodge a DRM free copy, which would be released to the public domain when the copyright expires, or on abandonment (so people wouldn't be denied acces…

>>Moreover, DRM prevents copyright content from entering the public domain. In my personal opinion, anything that's not available without DRM shouldn't get copyright - otherwise it subverts the deal at the centre of copyright.

Inasmuch as I am sympathetic to the argument, how would a government force DRMless software without attacking encryption itself or violating a company's 1st amendment rights to sell whatever digital products as it sees fit? DRM is protected speech so long as encryption or encryption schemes are protected speech (malware a la Sony's rootkit notwithstanding).

>>Copyright is not a natural right, the balance is totally out of whack. Copyright terms have become abusively long; the deal is not fair anymore.

Copyright isn't a natural right but neither is someone else's content or products. Without copyright, every smart person would keep their inventions as trade secrets with limited disclosures/demonstrations that, like Greek fire, will eventually be lost to the ages. While copyright terms can be abusive and long, that alone does not make the concept invalid.

Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos

#289

Post by 6510 » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 9:02 PM UTC

colllectorof wrote: post #253

sascha_sl wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're "renting" something that can be effortlessly replicated ad infinitum. This is only slightly less true for books and optical media. You are never paying for the paper or plastic - even on the lowest margins that's at most 10% of it - , you're paying for the privilege of consuming what's on it. > How much of what you pay for "digital rentals" goes to creators and towards running the actual infrastructure to do…

>> You're "renting" something that can be effortlessly replicated ad infinitum. >This is only slightly less true for books and optical media. You are never paying for the paper or plastic - even on the lowest margins that's at most 10% of it - , you're paying for the privilege of consuming what's on it. When I pay for a book in a bookstore, part of the money goes towards maintaining the system that produces and distr…

> It will create an entirely different system.

Simple as that sounds I didn't think of it before. It seems that if all the old systems can/might/will be replaced by the mega corp we could simply set a modest fixed megacorp-tax of say 1-2% and have the rest go to the creator of the text or video.

It was the author who provided the excuse in the old system why we should pay for easily replicated data. The argument that we should pay to be able to find the data was never a thing. It might as well be but it isn't. We can generously give this party 1% for the great effort they made finding the product I wanted to purchase. (The author should probably pay the megacorp for hosting and bandwidth)

After all, the mega corp is our hostage first and we are theirs second.

Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos

#290

Post by jerjerjer » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 9:03 PM UTC

Good. These days when a lot of possessions are not physical, and not even bytes on a hard drive, but just some entries in some company database allowing you a limited access we need more rules than "companies are allowed to do whatever they want".